Negligent parents, lawbreaking kids

By LZ Granderson, CNN Contributor

Updated 1619 GMT (2319 HKT) August 22, 2013

Charges filed in death of Australian student7 photos

Charges filed in death of Australian student – Christopher Lane, from Australia, was gunned down in Duncan, Oklahoma, while he was out jogging last week. Police say he was killed by three teens who said they had nothing better to do. Police have now charged the three teens in Lane's death.

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Charges filed in death of Australian student – Flowers and a baseball lay on the Essendon Baseball Club's home plate as a tribute to Lane in Melbourne, Australia, on Wednesday, August 21.

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Charges filed in death of Australian student – Sherrie Shannon places flowers at a memorial in Duncan, Oklahoma, on August 21 at the scene where Lane was found dead.

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Charges filed in death of Australian student – The parents of Christopher Lane, Peter and Donna, speak to the media in Melbourne on Monday, August 19.

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Charges filed in death of Australian student – Michael Jones, 17, faces two charges: use of a vehicle and discharge of a weapon and accessory after the fact to murder in the first degree.

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Charges filed in death of Australian student – James Edwards Jr., 15, has been charged as an adult with felony murder in the first degree.

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Charges filed in death of Australian student – Chancey Luna, 16, has been charged as an adult with felony murder in the first degree.

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Story highlights

14-year-old killed by officer at 3 a.m. LZ Granderson asks, where were the parents?

LZ: Police say boy was shooting at others, was arrested before for attempted murder

A detail in the fatal shooting of 14-year-old Shaaliver Douse by a New York Police Department officer earlier this month has been stopping me from grieving his death.

The tragedy happened around 3 a.m.

Why was a 14-year-old boy out that late without his mother, Shanise Farrar, who called the shooting an assassination? Or his aunt, Quwana Barcene, who said the bloody gun police say was found near his body was part of a coverup? Where was the supervising adult who should have been with a 14-year-old boy walking the streets of New York at 3 o'clock in the morning?

"I'm not saying that he's the best one, but he's my angel," his grieving mother said.

LZ Granderson

Her "angel" was a suspected gang member who police say was chasing and shooting at an unidentified man when they encountered him. Her "angel" was arrested last month for attempted murder of a 15-year-old. Her "angel" left their apartment around 8 p.m. and she had no idea where he was until the next morning when detectives informed her that her son was dead.

I want to mourn for her loss, I really do.

But as callous and as heartless as this sounds, I just can't get past what awful parents she and the boy's father were. Children may be born angels, but with all the temptations out there in the world, it takes work to try to keep them that way.

I'm sure the three teenagers suspected in the death of 23-year-old Christopher Lane -- killed because they allegedly were bored -- started off as angels. But who, besides their parents, would call them angels now?

As a newspaper reporter, I covered and was around a fair number of crime scenes involving juvenile delinquents and few things bothered me more than listening to their parents. Crying, ranting, proclaiming how great their children were despite being kicked out of school or previous run-ins with the law.

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That's not to say kids won't be kids. Of course they will be.

Which is why it is vitally important that parents be parents.

So when kids get bored, they don't think they should go "f**k with some n**gers," as then-18-year-old Deryl Dedmon Jr. suggested before he and his buddies ran over and killed 49-year-old auto worker James Craig Anderson, the first black person he saw, with his pickup truck back in 2011. Or randomly shoot a college student jogging down the street as entertainment -- though it seems the shooting may not have been as random as previously thought considering one of the suspects, who is black, tweeted that he hated white people back in April.

Parents are supposed to instill a sense of right and wrong in their children and then keep up the due diligence necessary to make sure they don't veer off that path. When parents don't do that, we end up with three 15-year-olds assaulting and breaking the arm of a 13-year-old on a school bus in Florida.

"It's just the way it is. My son ain't never been no bad person, he just got mixed with bad people, that's all ... he sorry."

I am not a perfect parent with all the answers. But I do know that it was the father, and not the son, who was apologizing -- and that, my friends, is our problem in a nutshell.

We don't teach accountability, we don't expect accountability and I'm not even sure we even know what accountability looks like anymore. Some of us have become so addicted to pointing fingers at others for all the wrong that happens in our lives that self-assessment has become synonymous with blaming the victim.

Yes, there are cultural factors that make parenting difficult. And sometimes a bad seed is just that. But none of this excuses us from taking personal responsibility where we can.

I am tired of seeing "sorry" being used to cloak negligent parents.

Sorry won't bring back Christopher Lane or James Craig Anderson.

And they, too, were each somebody's "angel."

If sorry is not good enough to protect a bartender who serves alcohol to a visibly intoxicated person who drives and kills someone, why is sorry good enough for parents who, through negligence, are culpable for the crimes their undisciplined children commit?

If my son goes out and breaks the neighbor's window, I have to pay for it. Why is a window more sacred than another human life?

We need to hold parents more accountable, both culturally and legally, for the actions of their children. Maybe then more parents will be more engaged in the lives of their children on the front end, rather than the back end, in front of a judge. Society has avenues for juveniles who refuse to obey their parents. But where are the safeguards for society when parents decide not to use those avenues?

I'm tired of hearing how good the kids who commit heinous crimes are. Maybe we should start putting parents on the witness stand so they can tell us exactly what they did to raise such perfect children.